High Velocity Bowling Updates – Two New Ball Packs and More

Hi there, bowling fans! Brandon here. It’s been a couple months since my last High Velocity Bowling post, but we’re back with some more goodies for you to roll with. Some of you may have missed it because of all the E3 excitement, but we released a patch and two brand new characters for you June 3rd. We are also releasing two new ball packs for you at the end of the month. Here is some info for our new additions:

The Patch
There were a couple things we wanted to fix up to make things a bit more enjoyable:

Resolved network stability issues

Background music playback is now available while not signed into PSN

More than 1 additional costume is now allowed especially in Online Head to Head.

Characters

Don Carlos ‘El Gordo’ Caliente
Don Carlos is a lower tier Luchador from Mexico City, Mexico. Beyond his size, his love for spicy foods has equipped him with the internal power to launch the ball. Unfortunately, his brute force leaves him with very little spin success. Comes with the new Casa de Caliente lane.

Milan ‘Princess’ Travellage
Milan is the daughter of a wealthy motel magnate from Van Nuys, California. This wannabe celebutante sports knockoffs of the latest fashions, and plays with the best second-hand balls on the market, which are great for adding spin. But she lacks power because she’s scared of breaking one of her cheap press-on nails. Comes with the new Celebutante’s Row lane.Ball Packs

Tiki Polynesian Ball Pack
The Tiki Polynesian Ball pack was inspired by the cool, laid back attitude of the islands, including 2 showcase balls.

60’s Surf Ball Pack
The 60’s Surf Ball Pack was inspired by the legacy and style of 1960, including 2 showcase balls.

The new characters and ball packs can be had for just $0.99. Stay tuned in because we’ll have a lot more stuff for you throughout the year. Don Carlos and Milan are out now, and the new ball packs will be out in the coming weeks.

We hope you enjoy all the new goodies from HVB family. For those late bloomers who haven’t played the game yet, we invite you to pick it up. It’s great fun for family and friends, at home or using online multiplayer.

We\’ve certainly thought about it. That would be pretty cool to do. Unfortunately we are two entirely different games within the same family. Both structures are much different and would require quite an undertaking to make that work. But for now, we\’d like to focus on bringing you fans many more fun characters and ball packs to keep the game alive. Thanks for the support.

Your welcome for the support. Thank you for your support. The Home space seems to be a hot topic this time around. It\’s a great idea. For now, our immediate focus is bringing alot of new content to you fans. We will certainly keep the Home space in mind. Thanks for the support.

Nice to see y’all still support this game. I love this game and ever since it went online I thought that it could use and update where you could play with up to about 3 other people. That would be superb!! Also tournaments would be great. Could someone please chill out on making new characters for a while and look into that? Oh and speaking of new characters it doesn’t make sense to get new characters and bowling balls if you can’t show them off online. They shouldn’t be invisible. Also what’s with no custum music while chat is on? If these things get addressed in an update this game would be perfection!

You are absolutely right with all of your points. We as a team have been evaluating those very elements to improve the game. But those changes do not come quickly and are not small tasks. So we are right there with you. It takes work to be perfect, but for the present day, we want to continue the fun. Thank you for your support.

1. Will there be an update for 2-player PSN log-in on the same console?
2. Will we ever seam a 2-player team competitions added to the game?
3. Are additional trophies going to be added to the game? A possible platinum maybe?

I cannot give you a definite yes to any of your 3 questions. But I can tell you that, that has been a big topic of conversation for the team. Before any decision to address any of those is made we need to ensure our plan is solid. We wouldn\’t want to jeopardize the game. We will keep you fans informed if that possibility arises. Thank you for your support.

It’s great to see you are still creating content for this game but I stopped playing because there are no new challenges available. I was trying to get a perfect score but gave up, I remember reaching more than 250 points once and couldn’t beat that again.

Maybe you could make some obstacle challenges for online mode or something.

The guy who said horrible things about the characters in the game is right, I don’t find a character who is appealing to me, they all seem to be a bunch of losers and that combined with the music sets an unpleasing feel to the game. Maybe you can enter the play/share/create fashion that is strong right now and develop a “Customize Your Character Until It Stops Looking Pathetic” mode. We can call it CYCUISLP mode when we speak about it here on the blog.

Hi Brandon, thanks for the reply on my previous post (23). I’ve now thought of a question.

I like all of the additional characters, but I really enjoy seeing all of the work your team has put into the characters’ lanes. Are there any plans for future DLC packs that are dedicated to new lanes? I think that would make a great enhancement.

At the moment there are no plans in exclusively dedicating our efforts to new lanes. Thus far, our process has always been creating a package that includes a character, ball and lane for a single price. We appreciate your support.

You guys should come out with a purchasable, Create-A-Character store item. This way some unhappy people could make their own characters that will make them once again happy to play the game. Make it like 1.99 or 2.99. If you did this, many people would pay to make a game character to make of themselves. :)

This would be a pretty cool idea, but this is so much easier said than done. Putting a create a character mechanism in the game at this point would get pretty complicated, and could hinder the quality of the game. We appreciate the thought. Thanks for your support.

You guys have really put the sixaxis motion to ecellent use simulating the bowling motions on the PS3. Will you guys be working on any other title(s) for the PS3/PSN that utilize the sixaxis? I would imagine you guys could make a great High Velocity Golf game.
I still play HVB almost every day still and I bought this game when it first came out.

Hi, Brandon:
We love HVB, thanks for putting out good downloadable contents. We would like to see
1. Online Tournament
2. Online Challenge (3 or more player in same room)
3. Online trick shot
4. Random oil patter for online play

The online scene has died down quite a bit.
I believe if any of the above is implemented the online scene will explode again.

I agree. The team has been really talking about beefing up the online…it just may take a bit because it is not an easy task. We need to make sure the current game is not jeopardized, and that the timing is right. Thanks for the support!

I want what #39 has to say more than anything for this game. If you spent all your funding and energy doing that instead of giving us new balls and characters that would be awesome even though it’s cool you’re still expanding on this game. I still play it when I get on a bowling kick as it’s a lot cheaper than real bowling. (I can’t afford to bowl where I live as it’s $15 a game)

you should start work on a new psn game for the new motion control. i love hvb but i have beaten it 100% and there is nothing much else for me to do.. actually motion controlers wont be out for a while so you should release a hvb 2.. i would buy it.

YAY :) but to be honest I don’t buy the tiny winy add-ons.. that are already preloaded into the games. I find them useless. I mean look how many LBP content there is.. is it really worth it? NO.
I would prefer to save the money on actual games!
Anyway off-topic there… Mum, Relatives and me like the Grandma cause she makes funny noises and we all laugh. So yeah that’s kool.. one thing that the wii doesn’t have. What is strange is my mum (doesn’t even play games at all) goes “can you get me the wii cause of the bowling game on that console?” I was like yeah right on your birthday you will. Ironically she doesn’t even know anything or even plays console games. Even my Grandma likes the games and ironically again beats us like 3 times in the bowling on the wii. It’s real fun and simple :) I’m not saying HVB is crap or anything all I am saying is that the controller is really weird on the PS3, is slightly complicated and I just haven’t been bothered playing it any more. And now my PS3 got the YLOD.. another reason to get the wii.

The only thing (more) to make this experience better would be the ‘Home Game Launching’ feature. I noticed a prior comment on this, and wanted to voice my support! There’s a problem when no one really wants to play a skilled player like me… and I rarely receive invites when players are ranked so much lower that they don’t seem to bother. Thus, the Game Launching within Home would really work well! I mean, it’d be such a fun way to connect with friends- more people will buy the game IMO because of it! :) Hope it gets added…!

Thank you for your support. The Home Launching is certainly a hot topic, and the entire team hears you guys loud and clear. In short, that is a great idea. If that ever becomes a possibility, you fans will be the first to know about it.

I’d love to see a new character based on a real-world comedian, perhaps with rated M voice content. (People who don’t explicitly buy the content never hear it, and there are already parental controls, so I don’t see any problem with having some saucy content a la PAIN.) A large variety of high-quality (lossless audio, at least) lines would be worth $1.99 for me.

Dana Gould, Bob Odenkirk, Patton Oswalt, and Louis CK immediately come to mind. Having them record some standard lines, write their own, and ad-lib new ones (maybe record them while they play the actual game?) would be really excellent and quite innovative.

Even a better variety of lines for the existing characters would be nice, but I wouldn’t expect to pay money for them.

First off, the suggestion does not sound weird. Adding content like that is indeed attractive, but not very easy…or really possible to put in our game. Making a move like that would affect our ESRB rating…regardless if you had a function to turn it on and off. I hope that makes sense.
Thank you for the support.